I read this sentence in The New York Times not long ago: “Most evenings, before watching late-night comedy or reading emails on his phone, Matt Nicoletti puts on a pair of orange-colored glasses that he bought for $8 off the Internet.” The phrase that caught my inner ear was “off the Internet.” It sounded odd […]
… learn more→

Too bad we can’t put to work the delicious usage data gathered by libraries. Research libraries may not know as much as click-obsessed Amazon does about how people interact with their books. What they do know, however, reflects the behavior of a community of scholars, and it’s unpolluted by commercial imperatives. But privacy concerns have […]
… learn more→

Ten years ago, an odd request landed in my email inbox. It was a message from my sister, Anne, sent to me through a company called Friendster, prompting me to join her friend network. I puzzled over the missive for several minutes, trying to determine what she was asking me to do. Was this some […]
… learn more→

When Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” hit newsstands in the July/August 2008 edition of The Atlantic, the reaction was predictably vociferous. The essay itself – a 4,175 word editorial monolith of the kind The Atlantic does so well – was a thoughtful exploration of the fear that heavy reliance upon the internet […]
… learn more→

Your friend Kate answers the phone. You remind her you’re meeting at 10am tomorrow for breakfast. You tell her your fractured wrist is healing but the doctor said there’s still some way to go. Your mum’s illness … well, that’s a different matter. Your hang-gliding, of course, is on hold, but you want to get […]
… learn more→

Whenever the press covers a story about hackers, a great deal of the discussion concerns the nature of online identity, the cohesiveness of hacking groups, and the individuals that identify with these groups. This is particularly the case with discussion of hackers that consider themselves part of the hacktivist group Anonymous. This is due, in […]
… learn more→

Learning and the internet are two things that seem to be made for each other. More and more people are using the internet to learn and teach. These days you can learn to cook online, learn to sew, learn to tie a tie, and you can even get a college degree. With all these exciting […]
… learn more→

As the Internet evolves, people around the world have faster, easier ways to connect. Innovative plans and economic opportunities are being hatched online, but so are ideas that challenge governments. Voices of dissent are amplified by social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, leaving some countries confused about how to balance free expression rights […]
… learn more→

The abundance of false information available on the Internet, in movies and on TV has created a big challenge for educators. Students sometimes arrive in classrooms filled with inaccurate knowledge they are confident is correct, indicating it is deeply entrenched in their memory. According to Duke University researchers, educators might be able to help students […]
… learn more→

It’s very clear that the computer and the Internet are revolutionizing almost everything that we do. From shopping to entertainment, newsgathering and dissemination, and on to education, almost all of the services and things we used to be able to do only in “real life” we now are able to do virtually. There is a […]
… learn more→